mon soldiers
who had no previous instruction, he erected, in nine days, a structure
eighty feet high and four hundred feet long, which for more than a year
carried the immense railroad-trains supplying the Army of the Potomac.
It was visited and critically examined by officers in the foreign
service, as a remarkable specimen of bold and successful military
engineering.

Major-General McDowell, in his defence before the Court of Inquiry, made
the following statement in regard to the Potomac-Creek Bridge, on the
line of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad.

"The large railroad-bridge over the Rappahannock, some six
hundred feet long by sixty-five feet high, and the larger part
of the one over Potomac Creek, some four hundred feet long by
eighty feet high, were built from the trees cut down by the
troops in the vicinity, and this without those troops losing
their discipline or their instruction as soldiers. The work
they did excited, to a high degree, the wonder and admiration
of several distinguished foreign officers, who had never
imagined such constructions possible by such means, and in such
a way, in the time in which they were done.

"The Potomac-Run Bridge is a most remarkable structure. When it
is considered, that, in the campaigns of Napoleon,
trestle-bridges of more than one story, even of moderate
height, were regarded as impracticable, and that, too, for
common military roads, it is not difficult to understand why
distinguished Europeans should express surprise at so bold a
specimen of American military engineering. It is a structure
which ignores all the rules and precedents of military science
as laid down in books. It is constructed chiefly of round
sticks cut from the woods, and not even divested of bark; the
legs of the trestles are braced with round poles. It is in four
stories, three of trestles and one of crib-work. The total
height from the deepest part of the stream to the rail is
nearly eighty feet. It carries daily from ten to twenty heavy
railway-trains in both directions, and has withstood several
severe freshets and storms without injury.

"This bridge was built in May, 1862, in nine working-days,
during which time the greater part of the material was cut and
hauled. It contains more than two million feet of lumber. The
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